Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign used prison workers
Billionaire US presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg used prison workers to make telephone calls for his election campaign, according to a US media report.
The Intercept reported on Tuesday that Bloomberg's campaign contracted, through a third-party vendor, the ProCom call center company based in Vineland, New Jersey.
ProCom runs call centers in New Jersey and Oklahoma, where two of its call centers operate from state prisons, The Intercept said.
Bloomberg called the report "fundamentally accurate" and said his campaign had already ended its relationship with the company involved.
“We do not support this practice and we are making sure our vendors more properly vet their subcontractors moving forward,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
He said the campaign learned of the ties to prison labor when a reporter called.
Bloomberg last month entered the Democratic Party race to face Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.
The New York City mayor has a net worth of more than $54 billion, according to Forbes, making him the eighth-richest American. He has spent more on campaign ads in the last few weeks than his main Democratic rivals have all year.
Recent polls show Senator Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren are the party’s leading candidates. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted last week showed only 5 percent of voters support Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is poised to run as a centrist and analysts suspect that he could take away some of the support enjoyed by fellow moderate Biden.
Voters on the left of the party, who favor Warren or Sanders, see him as the sort of billionaire they would like to tax heavily to reduce America’s massive wealth inequality.
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